Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Since January 2009, a rhesus macaque has been on the lam in Tampa Bay, Florida. Despite repeated attempts to capture him, including being shot with tranquilizer darts on two separate occasions, the monkey has managed to avoid being brought in. He’s covered hundreds of miles while sauntering through three counties.

The link erroneously reports the average life span of a rhesus monkey in the wild as four years. I’m not sure if Tampa Bay counts as “the wild”, but even if so, a lifespan of 10-15 years is more likely. Officials might be resting on their laurels now, hoping this problem will just die away, but it could be a decade or more before that happens.